Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 879: Sunfield

The rain did not stop until midnight.

By then, the riverbed at the bottom of Sunfield’s hill was full. The well had water in it up to the rope. Every pot and bowl and bucket in the village stood outside the houses, filling up, and nobody had gone to bed.

Ainen had not stopped cooking.

He had set up at the shrine, under the eaves, right beside the tall gray door. Brightwater was on the other side of it.

Saffa and Fraisea passed pots and sacks and firewood through the light, and Ainen took them and cooked, and the people of Sunfield came and ate.

They did not push. They stood in a quiet line in the rain and held out their hands.

"Small bowls," Kayla called through the door. She had come to stand beside Almond in the doorway. "Their stomachs won’t take much yet. Small bowls, and often."

"I know," said Ainen. "I’ve done this before."

He had. Almond remembered the Shelf, and the long night after it. Ainen had fed thousands of hungry, frightened people that night, and he had done it in exactly this way, one small bowl at a time.

The old man from the well was called Tobin.

He sat on the shrine step with a bowl in his hands and Wren beside him. Every so often he looked up at the gray door, and then at John, and then back at his bowl. He had not said much since John told him who he was.

Rudra sat down on the step on the other side of him.

"How long have you been here?" Rudra asked. "Your people. In Sunfield."

Tobin thought about it.

"Always," he said. "My grandmother’s grandmother was born here. Hers too, I think. Nobody remembers coming."

"And the white stones?"

"Always here." Tobin looked out at the line glowing faintly in the rain. "The old story says the first ones planted them. We don’t know what that means."

Rudra and Kael looked at each other.

"Has a voice ever spoken to you?" Natalia asked. "Out of nowhere. In your head. Telling you how heavy your soul is."

Tobin stared at her.

"No," he said slowly. "Why would it?"

Natalia was quiet for a moment. Then she held up her hand in front of her own face, the way they all did when they looked at their status.

"Can you see anything here?" she asked. "When you do this?"

Tobin held up his hand and looked at it. Wren did the same. A few of the people nearby did it too, watching each other.

"I see my hand," said Tobin.

"Nothing else?"

"What else would there be?"

Nobody answered that.

Kael got up and walked a little way along the line of people waiting for food. He stopped beside a young man and held up his own hand, and asked the same question. Then a woman. Then a boy.

He came back and sat down.

"Nothing," he said quietly. "Not one of them. No weight. No imprints. Nothing."

"Then how do you fight them?" Rudra asked Tobin. "The lords. The things like the Drinker."

Tobin looked at him as if he had asked something foolish.

"We don’t," he said. "We hide. Inside the stones. And when a lord sits down outside, we wait, and hope it gets bored." He looked down at his bowl. "Sometimes it doesn’t."

Wren leaned against his arm.

"That’s why Gran went to the little door," she said. "Every day, when she was young. And her gran before that. Because the story said a boy came out of it once." She looked at John. "And he said he’d pay us back."

John had been standing by the old stone with the writing on it, a little apart from them all. He did not turn around.

"I meant it," he said.

"You took a long time," said Wren.

"I know."

"Gran said you’d forgotten."

John was quiet.

"I never forgot," he said. "I just couldn’t find the way back."

Hessa came to the door near midnight.

She did not come through. She stood on Brightwater’s hearth with Almond and Lily and looked through the light at the rainy dark of Sunfield.

"I couldn’t see it before," she said. "From over here. I looked everywhere." She put her hand over her eyes. "Let me try from here."

She was quiet for a long time.

"Oh," she said.

"What?" asked Lily.

"I can see it now. Through the door." Hessa’s voice was strange. "It’s wide. It’s so wide. There’s grass, gold grass, for days in every direction. And there are lines."

"How many?"

"I don’t know. A lot. They’re far apart, much farther than ours." Hessa pressed her hand harder. "They’re small. All of them. Most of them aren’t bigger than Sunfield."

Almond waited. He could tell she had not finished.

"And half of them are dark," Hessa said.

Nobody spoke.

"The stones are there," she said. "I can see them. But there’s no light in them. There’s nobody inside." She lowered her hand. Her eyes were wet.

"There’s a dark one an hour’s walk east of Sunfield. And another past that. And another. They go on and on, Almond. As far as I can look."

Lily’s hand found Almond’s.

"Like Westhollow," she said. "Like Brightwater, before we came."

"Yes," said Hessa.

Through the door, Ainen had stopped stirring the pot.

He had heard. He stood under the shrine eaves with the ladle in his hand and the rain coming down past him, and looked out across the dark at the gold fields that none of them could see.

"Tobin," he said. "The dark lines. The ones near here. Did you know anyone in them?"

Tobin did not answer at once.

"My sister married into Millbrook," he said at last. "East. An hour’s walk." He looked at his bowl. "The stones went dark there in the spring. Nobody came out."

Ainen put down the ladle.

"Then tomorrow," he said, "we go and look."

"There’s nothing to see," said Tobin. "They’re gone."

"Maybe," said Ainen. "But I’d like to go and look anyway. And I’d like to bring a pot."

Tobin stared up at him.

Then the old man put his bowl down on the step, and put his face in his hands, and his shoulders shook. Wren put her arms around him. Nobody else said anything.

Rudra stood up. He looked at Kael, and Kael nodded.

"Tomorrow," said Rudra.

Natalia was already checking her bowstring.

John turned around from the old stone at last. He looked at Ainen standing in the rain with his pot, and at Rudra and Kael and Natalia, and at the people of Sunfield in their quiet line.

"I said I’d pay them back," he said. "I didn’t know it would take all of you."

"It always does," said Ainen.

Almond watched them from the doorway.

He wanted to go. He wanted it so badly that his foot had moved half an inch over the edge of the light before he noticed. Lily’s hand was still in his. She did not pull him back. She only held on.

He moved his foot back.

"Next time," Lily said quietly. "When it’s born. We’ll both go."

"Both of us?"

"All three," said Lily.

It was late when the rest of them finally slept. Kael and Natalia went back through the door to sleep in Brightwater’s hall.

Rudra stayed in Sunfield, under the shrine eaves, beside the pot. John stayed too. He sat with his back against the old stone and did not close his eyes.

Ainen came back through the door last.

He came through yawning, with soot on his face and his sleeves rolled up, and sat down hard on Brightwater’s hearth beside Almond and Lily. Saffa sat down on his other side and put her head on his shoulder.

"Three hundred and four," Ainen said. "That’s how many ate tonight. I counted the bowls." He shut his eyes. "Three hundred and four new threads."

Big D had been sitting at the long table the whole evening. He got up and came over to the hearth with the book under his arm.

"Three hundred and four," he said.

He opened the book to a clean page near the front, where he kept the living. At the top of it, in big careful letters, he wrote one word: Sunfield.

"No names yet," he said. "I’ll go through tomorrow and get them."

"All of them?" asked Ainen.

"All of them." Big D closed the book. "They’ve been out there with nobody writing them down for long enough."

"You should sleep," said Saffa.

"I will."

He did not move. He sat with his eyes shut and his hand flat on his chest, the way he always did when he was feeling his threads.

Then his eyes opened.

"Ainen?" said Lily.

He did not answer. He was sitting up straight now, his hand pressed hard against his chest, and his face had changed.

"Someone’s pulling," he said. "On one of the threads. Hard."

"Which one?"

Ainen did not answer at once. He shut his eyes again and felt for it.

"It’s the bag," he said. "The bread bag. I gave it to her at the edge of the road." His voice was quiet. "I told her to call me if it ran out."

"Has it run out?" asked Almond.

"No," Ainen said. "It’s not that kind of pulling."

He opened his eyes and looked at the tall gray door, standing in the firelight with Sunfield’s rain on the other side of it.

"She’s not hungry," he said. "She’s frightened."